selenak

Back from the conference, and already preparing for the next trip. I'll be in Iceland from Wednesday till Sunday - not vacation, work, though of course I'll try to see as much of the country as I can in between. I'm very looking forward to it.

Thinking of fannish feuds and more dangerous RL stuff, I was reminded once again I'm usually not an either/or person. This eternal demand for exclusive partisanship seems, to me, to be somewhat dictatorial and limiting my enjoyement as a viewer/reader. Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine? Love them both, intensely so. Deep Space Nine versus TNG? I also love both. Albeit for different reasons. DS9 is, imo, the better written show; TNG is the only one of the Treks which really has that professed virtue, a family feeling in regards to the ensemble. (Whereas Classic Trek is Three Men and Some Sidekicks.) And now then then, in between bouts of angst and arc splendour, I like that. Plus it has my favourite Captain of all time. And I have to insist that long before John Crichton ever met the Aurora Chair, everyone on DS9 got their turn at being tormented or Joss Whedon sharpened his claws with the second season of Buffy for ensemble torture, the first example of me really fearing, hurting and agonizing for a series regular, and something which happened to him which wasn't ignored the next week, was when Picard got assimilated by the Borg. Jean-Luc was a pioneer.

But back to either/or's I don't like: BtVS or AtS? Both. Early seasons of BTVS versus later seasons? Again, I love both, with a slight preference towards the later seasons. Farscape or Firefly? Great Maker, as Londo would say, why? Love Farscape, mourn Farscape. Ditto for Firefly. (Plus I do think it's silly to compare twelve episodes of a first season which never got completed with later seasons Farscape; now if we're talking about the first twelve Farscape eps, I can see the point. Though again, love both.) Or the either/or A.S. Byatt indulged in in order to bash J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings - why? I know people who dislike both. I know people who like one but not the other. And I know people who enjoy both and think it's pointless to compare two different types of fantasy anyway.

Some links in the both/and spirit:

c_elisa takes a somewhat critical view on the first season of Babylon 5; her objection center on Sinclair and Delenn and their respective actors here;

bimo professers her love for Sinclair as the unsung hero of Babylon 5 here. (

andrastewhite, don't read the later - it contains a spoiler for Sinclair's ultimate fate.) Me? I like the first season. (And Sinclair, and Michael O'Hare.) Though there are certainly some episodes I can take or leave, but then these do exist in every season. I do agree with

c_elisa on the dreadfulness of whoever played Jason Ironheart in Mind War, btw.

Moving over to the Jossverse, Skywaterblue lists theories as to what precisely happened when Willow empowered the Potentials to become Slayers in Chosen, here.

And if you're interested in G.E. Lessing whom I raved about in an earlier entry, here is a short but instructive Who Is Who, and an English version of Nathan the Wise, the drama trying to find a solution for Muslim/Christian/Jewish coexistence, is
here, thanks to the Gutenberg Project.